Seems clear to me 
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Hey guys, you should form a band together!
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… just keep fiddling with it until your ice cream is not too hard and not too soft
They should sell torque wrench ice cream scoops so we can publish definitive specifications
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Tips from the appliance repair world (not an expert or anything just worked at a place for awhile)
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most user manuals are online and contain helpful infomation (like which way does what with the knobs)
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clean your refrigerator condenser coil. If you’ve never done it before it’s quite possible build up of hair and dust could be described as “heavy wool sweater”. The unit will cool better/use less power/ last longer when the condenser is reasonably clean. Probably located underneath or on top of unit. Looks like a car radiator (or a sweater)
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rinse your dishes before you put them in the dishwasher, there is a filter in the sump somewhere and it’s super gross
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An office building I had to draw up the contract specifications for had thermostats in every room to “control” the air conditioning/ventilation. It was a little wall-mounted box with a single dial marked +/- and a lathy wall-mounted cable duct disappearing into the suspended ceiling. There was a potentiometer in every box with two wires that went into the cable duct.
And that was it. The whole air-handling system was controlled centrally by a big box with blinkenlights in the installations room in the basement.
As far as I know there never were any complaints about the system from the office workers.
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I live in senior housing. A neighbor had this same problem. I had to look at my refrigerator to see what setting I was using.
This post might benefit from the Adventures In Pedantry tag 
I suspect we had the same kind of system, because the temperature in the office was either roasting or chilly. People used to complain all the time.
I just checked my refrigerator, freezer, and standalone freezer, on all of them the larger number is colder.
Put me down for that dial is not confusing.
I get this is one of those Instagram get the internet worked up posts that generates clicks and shares and comments but sheesh, it’s not that complicated.
From a manual. I’m bored waiting for my wife to be ready to go to the store so I checked a few manuals, all of the ones with dials and numbers say bigger is colder.
TEMPERATURE CONTROL
The dipping-display cabinet has a temperature control that is adjustable from #1 (warmest setting) to # 9 (coldest setting). Turn the control knob in line with the punch mark to the desired setting. The temperature control is located near the condensing unit at the front of the cabinet
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Since the numbers are purely arbitrary perhaps a colour gradient would be a better option.
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To the people who don’t find this confusing…great! I’m happy for you. It’s clear from reading all of the comments that many people do find this confusing. You cannot dismiss those complaints as just coming from people who aren’t as smart as you are. I worked as a design engineer in the HVAC manufacturing industry for 15 years. I find these style of refrigerator and freezer controls confusing and counterintuitive. In almost every other application, turning a control knob clockwise makes things warmer. Sure there’s an arrow here that says colder, but it’s not unreasonable to think that the arrow is referring to the numbers. And what is the number supposed to line up with? A punch mark in the cabinet? How is that intuitive?
A better design would be to have nothing printed on the knob, and instead print the words COLDER on one side of the panel the knob is mounted on, and WARMER on the other side, and then an arrow curving around the knob, running from WARMER to COLDER indicating what direction to turn the knob.
If a lot of people find a control confusing, then it’s poorly designed, no matter how much sense it makes to you. Many engineers don’t think like most people, but we often don’t realize this, and then we get indignant when someone says something we designed is confusing, and we say, “Well that’s ridiculous! Just look at it! It’s obvious!” It’s a common attitude among engineers, and it needs to be corrected. Again, if a lot of people are telling you it’s confusing, then it’s confusing. Fix it.
ETA: Here’s an example of one that’s not confusing.
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everything you said is spot on. if youre designing for people, and people don’t understand the design: that’s a design failure.
i suspect for older fridges, printing on the metal was probably cost prohibitive; so they chose the cheapest rather than the best choice. ( i’d wonder if some of those dials could actually spin freely with no stops. that might explain the “align with punch hole” type design )
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Possibly. Older thermostats were often just a wound coil of a bimetalic strip. Turning the dial just loosened or tightened that coil.
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Is your refrigerator running?
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It is operating satisfactorily.
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Curved arrow on a knob = Turn this way
Word in curved arrow = Turn this way for more of this
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Ok, you’ve convinced me with your logic. Everyone who is confused by the design is stupid. /s
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